Microsoft has spent years treading water with tablets (Source: Cult of Mac)

Microsoft UK exec says that Microsoft isn't ready to enter field just yet

Although Apple's iOS first showed up on the iPhone in 2007, it was
easily adapted to the larger iPad that launched in 2010.
Google is now starting to gain some traction with Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” -- it was
designed from the beginning for tablets. Likewise, HP/Palm
and RIM are using mobile, touch-optimized operating systems for their
tablets.

And where does leave Microsoft? For now, Microsoft is being
left behind as its competitors continue to move forward at a lightning fast
pace. Even though the company has a stellar basis for a tablet OS with Windows
Phone 7, Microsoft exec Ashley Highfield says that the time just isn't right
yet to jump into the fray.

"We won't do anything in the tablet market unless we
can be distinctive," Highfield told
Pocket-lint.

For now, Microsoft is pushing Windows 7 as its
"tablet" operating system of choice. In fact, Highfield notes that he
uses Dell's poorly
received Inspiron Duo for tablet duties.

Windows 8 will support
ARM processors that are so prevalent in today's iPads,
Xooms, and PlayBooks,
but such a fully featured operating system is still a bit of overkill for a
7" to 10.1", touch-dominated device.

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Oh right, so members of the public are expected to waste time doing that instead of actually, you know...using the device? That worked out really well for MS Tablet PC's didn't it! The PC market is very obviously moving away from the whole "You need to tweak and optimise this device before you can use it" model to being simply an appliance. Whilst I enjoy tweaking and overclocking with the best of them, sometimes I just want to do something quickly and use the device for its intended purpose. This is where tablets work really well in the sense that they switch on to a usable state instantly and are designed to be responsive with no lengthy waits for the device to catch up (in principle).

If you look at the way sales are going, Laptops have outsold full pc's for ages, then Netbooks became big and now the iPad and other tablets are taking a sizeable chunk of the Laptop and Netbook markets. With Mac OSX now distributing Apps through full OS Appstores and iOS, and the whole market following Apple's strategic lead, the name of the game is integration and ease of use. I fully expect full laptops and, to a degree, netbooks sales to be extremely limited once it actually clicks with the buying public that they can do pretty much anything they might (reasonably) want to do on an iPad or other tablet and free themselves from one more bulky device.